Thursday, August 13, 2015

RPGaDay2015: Day 13

Favorite RPG podcast:

I'm very picky when it comes to podcasts, especially gaming podcasts.  To earn my ongoing loyalty, they need to meet the following criteria:

Length:  No more than ninety minutes per episode.  I don't care how interesting your topic is, I listen to these things on my commute and seldom feel like devoting multiple days to it.  Also, in my experience, the longer the podcast, the more likely there's a bunch of cruft due to poor editing, poor decision-making, or both.

(I will listen to a longer actual-play podcast so long as 1) it stays on topic (I don't need to hear a bunch of non-game table talk; 2) It's still edited into discrete episodes; and 3) The GM and players actually know what they're doing.  Chances are, if I'm listening to an actual play, it's because I want to get a sense of how the game plays. If I hear glaring rules errors, I'm tuning out.)

Frequency:  You've got to maintain your output if I'm going to keep listening.

Originality:  I'm not looking for you to reinvent the wheel.  But I don't want you to rehash the same topics over and over again (or, ideally, at all).  If you keep retreading the same ground over and over again, I'm going to get bored.  At least look at it from a different angle.

Every Episode Is Someone's First:  I really hate podcasts that cater to an established audience the podcasters know in some capacity.  In-jokes abound, often times schtick or comments are directed to that select group of people and it quickly becomes an impenetrable mess for a listener who isn't in on the joke.

So yeah, I'm a hard sell on most podcasts.  For a couple of years, I was a big fan of "Two GM's, One Mic," but they started getting repetitive, and then life got in the way of their schedules.  I used to listen to "Darker Days Radio" religiously when I was taking evening walks, especially their "Secret Frequency" segments.  But, I have zero prospects for playing a World of Darkness game, their expansion to covering other games I don't play, and sporadic scheduling meant I stopped listening.

The one that I have stuck with from the beginning is "Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff."  While there have been occasional clunkers (for instance, I couldn't listen to the segment on Cagliostro because of mispronunciation), the fact that each episode breezes along through multiple topics, some very gaming oriented, others less so, makes it easy to just fast-forward past a minor annoyance to get to something more to my liking.

1 comment:

  1. One thing I liked about KARTAS' format was the multiple rotating segments meant there were usually two topics that I actively wanted to hear, and then found the others interesting enough to enjoy, too.

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